Hair of Luna
Hair of Luna Artifact •• (•••), commit 6 (moonsilver) Spd 5, Acc +3, Dmg +2L, Range 350, Rate 2 This artifact looks like nothing so much as a mundane longbow very well-made from pale ash wood, unadorned but for a thin strip of plain silver along its inner limb. It can be strung and used like an ordinary bow of excellent quality (treat as a perfect longbow). The core of worked moonsilver inside its pale wood, though, gives it an entirely different order of function: instead of sinew, it can be strung with a thread of raw moonsilver. When so strung, it needs no arrows. Instead, a Hair of Luna fires arrow-shaped moonsilver projectiles formed right out of the bowstring. The catch is this: since the bow shoots arrows out of its own substance, its string thins as it fires until nothing is left. Arrows, once they strike, melt into pools of thick quicksilver: at the end of the scene, they lose all cohesion and sink into the ground. If the bow's bearer is quick enough to retrieve them before they melt away, they rejoin the rest of the bowstring with no loss. If not, though, each arrow costs one "shot". The two-dot version of the bow is strung with enough moonsilver for 50 shots; the three-dot, somewhat stouter and strung more thickly, holds 200 shots. Anyone attuned to the bow always knows how many shots she has left. The bow's bearer determines on the fly what type of arrow (out of the three usual varieties) she wishes to shoot; for an extra 2m and an extra arrow's-worth of moonsilver, she may specify any appropriately-sized weapon up to and including a short daiklaive (though if the weapon deals more than 2L, the cost rises by the difference in damage). Also for 2m, the bearer may have the arrow flex in midair to dodge cover and seek out its prey, negating up to 50% cover or eliminating the penalties for firing into a grapple. These weapons were mass-produced in the First Age: mortals can use them if they can attune, and the ability to shoot into grapples with impunity made them quite valuable. (One Lunar's army boasted a line of lionmen wrestlers backed up by hawkmen with these bows: with a tackle and a single judicious arrow, one pair made very short work of a foe.) They persist in the Second Age with the remarkable durability of artifacts, although few today know their true function. Mostly they linger as family heirlooms, thought to be simply beautifully-made longbows. Only a few among the Lunars remember their real uses or the secret of stringing them, though the secret is not difficult to master if one has a teacher. Likewise, only Raksi in her library remembers anymore the thaumaturgical ritual that calls liquid moonsilver out of the earth once it's lost its arrow-shape: why she hasn't gone prospecting for the mother-lodes of moonsilver impregnating the earth of many old battlefields is anyone's guess. Certainly she frustrates Ulimsi Hawkeye, the goddess whose purview the Hairs of Luna once were -- old Hawkeye would love to see all that quicksilver reclaimed, not least because she wants her old office back. Category:Sunlight on the Water Category:Sejzha Like the Brook